Want To Topple the Patriarchy? Learn From Female Bonobos.

These matriarchal apes can teach us a thing or two about power, alliances, and keeping the peace

Image licensed from Shutterstock

Until not that long ago, female-dominated primate species were dismissed as mere ‘outliers’ and often overlooked and understudied.

The unspoken logic seemed to be: the less we examine exceptions to male dominance, the more universal and inevitable it appears. Male-dominated species, by contrast, were closely scrutinised and their behaviour amplified, sometimes even misrepresented, to reinforce existing assumptions about human hierarchies. (See: the Monkey Hill exhibit at the London Zoo.)

But today, we do know that the animal kingdom, and primates in particular, display far more social diversity than once acknowledged. (Surprise, surprise.) Recent estimates suggest that in around 42% of both living and extinct primate species, females either dominate males or hold equal social status. And this pattern appears across all major primate groups, from lesser apes like gibbons to great apes like bonobos.

The latter, who, along with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives, are especially fascinating. Yet just as primate matriarchies were long ignored, so too were the mechanisms that sustain them — how female…